From a scholar of the classics:

…we should pay attention to a growing concern in the southeastern Mediterranean: A bankrupt Greece has alienated its patrons in northern Europe, has alienated the U.S. through years of anti-American rhetoric, has little or no financial resources, and will be facing cutbacks in its military — and a newly assertive Turkey is carving out a position of influence in the region as the real, and far more serious, representative of Islamic government, perhaps in the fashion of the old Ottomans.

Though actually, the old Ottomans would be a preferable (though not good) alternative to the new Wahhibist fundamentalists. At the least, it’s bad news for the Greeks on Cyprus, but allowing Turkey into NATO is making less and less sense.

They’re just on the other side:

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists, according to an IDF report, succeeded in stealing two handguns from soldiers and opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.

“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”

As Claudia Rossett notes, this isn’t about peace, or freedom, or humanitarian aid. It’s about making a terrorist-supporting political statement, with the added frisson of killing Jews.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more:

In a later search aboard the Marmara, soldiers found caches of bats, clubs, knives, and slingshots used by the rioters ahead of the IDF takeover. It appeared the activists were well prepared for a fight…

…It appears that the error in planning the operation was the estimate that passengers were indeed political activists and members of humanitarian groups who seek a political provocation, but would not resort to brutal violence.

They won’t make that mistake again.

[Late evening update]

A photomontage of “peace” activists.

And it’s time for Israel to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy.

It certainly hasn’t bought them much.

Some thoughts, and links.

Ron Radosh has some thoughts on anti-Israeli Jews.

[Update late morning]

More thoughts, and good ones, from Noah Pollack:

The sad truth is that Peter Beinart isn’t any kind of trailblazer or whistleblower, and he most certainly has not earned himself any trouble by coming out as an Israel-basher. He is someone who has rather belatedly fallen completely and predictably into line with the demands his ideological compatriots make for orthodoxy when it comes to their increasingly passionate interest in assaulting Israel and championing the Palestinian cause. In Beinart’s work, we are not witnessing an act of courage but rather a spectacle of conformity.

I used to think that Beinart was smarter than that.

Some thoughts on self-abasing Jews. I like the Star Trek reference in comments.

And sadly, this seems related. They’re not brown shirts — they’re purple shirts, supported and encouraged by the State.

Folks, for those who have been brainwashed by academia all these years, this is what real fascism looks like.

[Update later morning]

A thug too far? Unfortunately, probably not, unless the media gets interested in the story.

[crickets chirping]

Let us count the ways.

Meanwhile, so feckless is its erstwhile ally, Israel is forced to make an alliance with the Arabs against Iran.